1953 trump’s Market Tip
Friday, they were fuming in the halls of journalism and economics. President trump tweeted a supposedly innocent preview of the job figures which were to be released at 8:30 that morning. He said, to paraphrase, that he was “looking forward” to the announcement an hour before it was to be made.
This was the cigarette tossed into a tinderbox. Traders and other Wall Streeters saw that the report would be positive and adjusted their accumulation of wealth strategies for the day. It’s kind of like insider trading without a real insider and no specific financial product to trade.
Meantime, over in the Big Newsrooms of America, everyone was aghast and atwitter at the tweet because the president violated an agreement – maybe only in principle – that forbade foretalk of such things. A firing offense at many broadcast and print media.
Big Newsrooms of America get bent out of shape by stuff like that. trump broke the embargo. He beat them to news of the report without actually announcing the figure.
Now some Very Smart Economists say trump broke the law. All except pseudo economist Larry Kudlow, the president’s lap dog of the economy whose main job is to find ways to warp figures to suit the White House whim of the moment. He says it’s just fine to do that. And he says it with the articulateness of the TV personality that until recently he was. Picked for the job by his obedience training and a slight resemblance to Alan Greenspan.
The solution to this problem lies in the meat of the problem itself. The people in charge of (supposedly) independently calculating these figures should not advance them to anyone until 8:25 am, eastern time. That way, the Dogpatch Daily Report on WJFN radio and the Washington Post cannot scoop the competition.
And neither can the White House.
Note to everyone who got all exercised about this: The figures are subject to revision and can be revised in either direction. But, of course, that doesn’t count as much as formerly. With everything on speed-of-light computers these days, there are fortunes to be made if you know an hour early what the figure will be and its direction.
Now, the deep-state truth about the figure: No one knows whether it’s accurate, protestations to the contrary aplenty. But it doesn’t really matter to the real America unless it’s your job they’re talking about.
SHRAPNEL:
--All of a sudden, car makers have decided to cut sedan production to concentrate on SUVs. Another bumble. By the time they gear up and do this, something else will be the fad, and they’ll be stuck with an overstock of the 21st Century’s version of the deservedly failed American Motors Rambler or the confetti-decorated tail finned monsters the rest of Detroit was making at the time.
I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®
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